I never think about poetry except when I'm writing it. I mean my poetry.

Well, I'm a light traveller. I chuck things away.

A terrible thing about getting oldish is that your friends start dying, and in the last ten years I have lost seven or eight of my closest.

I was very interested in American poetry for many years. Much less now.

Anybody who writes doesn't like to be misunderstood.

And in a way, that's been a help to me, because I take great passions for a particular poet - sometimes it lasts for many years, sometimes only for a while. This happens to everybody.

However, I learned something. I thought that if the young person, the student, has poetry in him or her, to offer them help is like offering a propeller to a bird.